


Minotaur

by Nightdog_Barks



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-27
Updated: 2007-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the visitors to House's office, this was one of the strangest ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minotaur

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks must go to my intrepid First Readers, all of whom stuck with this every step of the way. Especial thanks and a special mention must go to [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/), whose wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for this fic was a continuing delight.

_**Housefic: Minotaur**_  
 **STATUS:** Posted to [](http://house-wilson.livejournal.com/profile)[**house_wilson**](http://house-wilson.livejournal.com/) on 9/27/07.  
 **TITLE:** Minotaur  
 **AUTHOR:** [](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_writes**](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/)  
 **PAIRING:** House-Wilson, strong friendship  
 **RATING:** A mild "R" for language.  
 **WARNINGS:** No.  
 **SPOILERS:** None.  
 **SUMMARY:** Of all the visitors to House's office, this was one of the strangest ...  
 **DISCLAIMER:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **AUTHOR NOTES:** Thanks must go to my intrepid First Readers, all of whom stuck with this every step of the way. Especial thanks and a special mention must go to [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/) , whose wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for this fic was a continuing delight.  
 **BETA: Silverjackal** , who said "Plural!"

 **Minotaur**

  
The Minotaur was in his office when House came back from lunch. Its back was to the door and it was looking out over the balcony, across the snow-covered quad to the opposite wing of the hospital. Hands clasped behind its back, its long, thick oxtail switched like an impatient metronome.

House hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. _Wilson's been dosing my coffee again,_ he thought to himself. He shut the door behind him and walked the rest of the way into the room.

The Minotaur turned around.

"Took you long enough," it said.

The creature's voice was a low bass rumble, rough and rusty like a barnyard door that hadn't been opened in a long time. House maneuvered around the Minotaur to get to his desk chair. A rich, heady scent of fresh earth and new-mown hay filled his nostrils. He plopped himself into the chair and sneezed.

"Gesundheit."

House wiped his nose with one of the stray tissues from his desk. "Thanks." He wadded up the tissue into a tight ball and tossed it overhand, aiming for the wastebasket. It hit the Minotaur's right leg instead.

The Minotaur looked at the snotty tissue, then at House.

"I've killed men for less than that," it said evenly.

"Yeah, but you're not going to kill me," House retorted. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a virile youth or a virginal maiden." He paused. "Except for the virile part," he amended. "But I'm not a maiden. That's Wilson's part."

The creature was shaking its shaggy head. "People still believe that?"

"What? About Wilson? Oh, he'll deny it, but --"

"No. The youths. The maidens."

"Oh." House looked around on his desk. Where had he put his GameBoy? "It's what the stories say --"

"The _stories,"_ the Minotaur interrupted, "were written by the _Athenians."_ The creature moved closer to House so that it was standing right in front of him. "Look at me," it commanded. "Do I look like the type that would devour anything other than _grass?"_

House looked.

The thing was _tall,_ taller than the tallest player in the NBA -- House knew, he'd bet on the Rockets last week. It was the kind of tall people usually described as _imposing,_ or _majestic,_ when what they really meant was _he's a fuckin' monster._ And this monster's feet were shod in what must have been the biggest wingtips available from Johnston  & Murphy. A rich oxblood color, they were the approximate shoe equivalent of a pair of aircraft carriers. House let his gaze travel upwards.

The Minotaur was wearing a suit. Not just any off-the-rack suit, but something bespoke and expertly tailored -- a Dolce & Gabbana, an Enrico Ferragamo, one of those Italian Mafia of clothiers. It was grey, the pale grey of dove's feathers, with pinstripes like faint chalk lines woven through the wool. The creature's tail flicked again, and House immediately pictured the seat of those expensive trousers -- was there a strategically-placed flap, perhaps with a Velcro patch? An extra-large buttonhole, carefully seamed on both sides and triple-stitched for wear and tear? House looked up again. An Hermes tie, royal blue with tiny golden bulls gamboling on the fine silk field, rested against a plain, tightly-woven white cotton shirt.

 _Damn,_ House thought admiringly. _Gotta give Foreman this guy's card._

"Well?" The Minotaur was leaning forward, his breath soft on House's face. It was much warmer than a normal human temperature and smelled of honey and clover, bees and long summer afternoons under a sun of molten butter.

"I'm still thinking," House said.

The thing blinked at him, long bovine lashes covering the deep brown eyes for just a moment. The Minotaur was black, House suddenly realized -- the great bull's neck where it rose from the shirt collar, its entire bull's head, was covered in fine sable hair. One long, velvety ear twitched; the inside of the ear was a dark fuzz that gave way to rosy pink skin at the entrance to the vertical canal. The Minotaur dipped its head, and House found himself staring at its horns.

They were ebony, smooth and polished as river rocks washed by an ancient stream. They curved upwards like cornucopias, the tips sharp as black crescent moons. House touched one.

The horn was thick and solid under his fingertips, and when the Minotaur made no objection he wrapped his right hand around it, gripping it tightly. It grew warm against his palm, and for a moment House felt as if he were holding the strongest cane in the world, live and animate in his hand. Then the Minotaur twisted its head, and House was left blinking, already missing the weight and warmth.

 _Damn, what the hell's Wilson giving me these days?_

House swallowed. "Self-defense," he said, affecting a note of unconcern. "Protection against predators. Discourage rivals. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

"Been there, thanks," the Minotaur replied dryly.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess you have." House leaned back in his chair. "So why are you here? No more light-footed maidens and rosy-lipped lads left to worship you? I could get Chase and Cameron in here -- "

"Shut up," the Minotaur rumbled, and House shut up. The creature settled itself into a half-sitting position on the edge of House's desk, bracing itself with one strong leg. The desk groaned and creaked, and House had a sudden vision of the safety glass crazing in wild, jagged patterns, cracking like an eggshell and cascading in deadly, glittering fragments to the floor.

"Don't you think ... " House began.

"It'll be fine," the Minotaur said, and House realized it was true. A chemically-induced hallucination, no matter how weighty it might appear, presented no danger to his office furniture. One of the Minotaur's pants legs was hiked up just a bit, and House found himself staring at the black silk sock covering the heavily-muscled calf. The desk creaked again, and House's eyes snapped back up. The Minotaur was regarding him with a look of wry amusement.

"You ready to listen now?"

House frowned, annoyed at having lost the conversational upper hand to a hallucination. "Go ahead," he grumbled. "What wisdom of the ages have you come to impart to us mere mortals? What sage advice have you brought down from the mountaintop? Oh, wait -- wrong mythology."

"No advice," the Minotaur replied mildly, "especially for those who believe they don't need any."

"Then what?"

"A quest."

The Minotaur waited patiently until House had finished laughing.

"I'm sorry," House managed to gasp out at last, wiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "But have you forgotten who you're talking to? Cane. Bum leg. Makes it a _little_ bit harder for me to steal fire from the gods or pull a sword from a stone." His breath hitched as he swallowed down another chuckle. "Besides, haven't most of the really cool quests already been done? I mean, Hillary and Norgay climbed Everest in '53. Hofmann synthesized LSD in 1938. And something right up your alley -- " House pointed an instructive finger at the silent Minotaur -- "Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy in 1870." He shook his head. "No unicorns, no Excaliburs left. Besides, I've already got my own set of vultures gnawing at my liver."

The Minotaur whuffed out a soft snort and carefully brushed an invisible tick of lint from its shoulder.

"It's nothing like that," it said, and stared absently out the window. Its tail thumped lightly against one leg. "You wouldn't even leave the grounds of the hospital. But if you'd rather not ... "

House eyed the creature warily. "You're playing me," he accused.

"No, no." The Minotaur stood up. House's desk groaned in relief. "I understand. You're a busy man -- clinic duty to shirk, misdiagnoses to make, patients to kill ... "

"Hey!" House yelped.

A corner of the Minotaur's mouth quirked up in what House supposed was an ungulate's version of a smile.

"Believe me," it said, "after the first thousand years you get to call them as you see them." The huge creature nodded, seemingly prepared to take its leave.

House cursed, struggling to his own feet. "Hold on," he said. "Now just hold on. What kind of a quest are we talking about?"

"What do you care?" the Minotaur countered. "You said you couldn't do it."

 _"Wouldn't,"_ House snapped. "There's a difference, you grain-fed side of Angus, and you know it. What's the degree of difficulty? Is the Russian judge going to disqualify me if I don't land with both feet in? I just want to know what I'm getting into."

"Dr. House," the Minotaur said gently, "the gods only give quests to those who are already on them."

House looked the Minotaur in the eye. He had to tilt his head back to do it.

"Pardon the expression," he growled, "but what kind of New Age _bullshit_ is that?"

"You're the one who wanted the wisdom of the ages. There it is. Take it or leave it."

House sighed and looked away. "I'll take it," he muttered. "At least until this side effect wears off. Now what am I supposed to do?"

Unperturbed by House's tone of voice, the Minotaur toed at something on the floor.

"Follow this thread through the labyrinth," he said. "Piece of cake."

House's gaze dropped to where the creature's foot was nudging. He squinted. A thin white thread, one end caught on a carpet nub, snaked across House's office floor. It made a beeline under the office door and continued out into the hallway, where it quickly blended into the background and disappeared from sight. He was sure it hadn't been there when he'd gone to lunch. He turned his gaze back to the Minotaur.

"And what happens then? When I get to the end of this ... cat toy?"

The Minotaur shrugged, its massive shoulders rolling easily under the expensive cloth. "Don't know," it said.

House's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, you don't know? You're an _archetype_ \-- how could you not know?"

"I mean I don't know. What do I look like -- the Oracle of Delphi?" The Minotaur snorted, and once again the scent of sweet clover filled the air. "That old girl was so whacked out on ergotamine half the time, we never knew what was going to come out of her mouth." The creature stepped back, giving House an unobstructed view of the thread. "Follow it or not, Doctor. Your choice."

House prodded at the thin string with his cane, then slowly, painfully, crouched down next to it. He grasped it between thumb and forefinger and brought it before his eyes. It appeared to be nothing more than plain white cotton, the simple thread one would use to sew a button on a shirt or a patch on a quilt.

"But how far does it go?" House muttered to himself. "Hey! Bull-guy! How far -- "

House's voice died away. He was alone in the office.

Outside, it had begun to snow again.

* * *

House was tired of looking at shoes.

Sneakers, dress shoes, pumps. Converse Hi-Tops, Mephistos, Manolo Blahniks. After a while he'd gotten tired of categorizing the shoes and had just begun lumping them all together as feet -- feet which sometimes got in his way as he followed the white thread through the hospital.

At first he had fed the thread through the fingers of his left hand as he'd tracked it. That had stopped when the unmistakable odor of fresh feces assailed his nostrils. He'd paused for a moment -- the thread, beginning only an inch or so from his forefinger and thumb, was stained a distinct coffee color as far as he could see. It was as if a particularly careless someone had stepped directly into a steaming cow patty and then gone traipsing through the hallways.

House muttered a curse and dropped the thread. He didn't have any gloves on him, and if he _wanted_ gloves, he'd have to duck into an Exam Room, and if he ducked into an Exam Room, he might have to actually see a patient. He'd just have to rely on his eyesight to follow the thread. His eyesight was still good enough for that, wasn't it?

He squinted.

Of course it was.

He poked at a particularly large right galosh with his cane and was rewarded with a pained yelp as its owner moved it out of the way.

"Hey!" the man called as House moved on, "Watch where you're going, buddy!"

"Watch where you're standing!" House responded, not bothering to turn around. The thread took a sharp left hook at the next crossway, and he continued to follow it, eyes fixed on the floor.

"Sorry about that, Dr. Andersen," a nurse said to the angry man with the galoshes. "That's Dr. House."

"I don't care who it is," Andersen grumbled, shaking his foot in the hopes of dissipating the lingering pain from the cane-stabbing. "He's a jerk."

The nurse sighed.

"Yes, doctor," she said. "We know."

* * *

Right. Left. Straight. Right again, and then another left, into Radiology.

So far the thread had taken House on a grand tour of the hospital. From Endocrinology he'd tracked it through Neurology and Metabolic Diseases, Orthopedics and Urology, Pulmonary and Pain Management (he'd snarled at Drs. Cohen, Fitzpatrick, and Hatchet, but they'd ignored him).

He'd interrupted a barium enema, caused a lab tech to drop a test tube full of ... something, he wasn't sure what but he hoped it wasn't _too_ infectious, in cytopathology, and awakened no fewer than five groggy subjects in the sleep lab when he had temporarily lost the thread in the dark.

In Gastro he had been greeted by the sight of Dr. Spanopopoulos inserting a flexible tube up the rectum of a very large, semi-conscious patient. The patient had drooled at him, and House had beaten a hasty retreat. Unless the spittle was green, black, or glowing like a lightning bug, House had no interest in drool.

He had sidestepped both Cuddy and Brenda Previn, dodged a gurney rushing by on a emergency mission, and rescued the thread just seconds before it had been buffed into nonexistence by an obviously oblivious janitor.

The thread had led in and out of the OR, into supply rooms, even all the way down to the morgue. The cotton string was easy to spot against the black, grooved floor grills of the elevators, where the sliding doors had snipped it neatly in two, but several times he'd had to backtrack to pick it up again on the right floor of the hospital. He had been forced to jab his cane between clueless patrons to punch the "close" and, more often, the "open" buttons, growling so fiercely each time the others had retreated to the back of the elevator.

At last the thread seemed to really be leading somewhere. The ambient noise of the lobby surrounded him, the hustle and bustle of doctors, patients, visitors, nurses -- closer, closer ...

House stopped dead.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me," he moaned.

The white thread led through the hospital doors, past shivering people in overcoats clapping their hands as if applauding the cold, right out into ...

... the snow.

* * *

House was cold. And wet, but mostly cold. His cropped hair clung to his head in damp waves, making him look somewhat like an old, disconsolate Golden Retriever, and melted snow was trickling down his back. He hadn't put on his jacket before starting on the quest; clad only in his usual jeans, t-shirt, and never-buttoned button-down, House quickly realized the chattering castanet sound he kept hearing was coming from his teeth.

"Fuck," he chanted. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." His leg was aching ferociously, the pain gnawing up his spine like the blunt, grinding teeth of some enormous reptile.

"Sir, are you okay?" the parking garage guy shouted from inside his guard booth. His enclosed, _heated_ guard booth.

"Do I _look_ like I'm okay?" House yelled back. _"You_ try coming out here and stealing fire from the world's largest herbivore!"

"Sir?" The guard looked bewildered.

"Never mind," House growled. "I'm mixing my metaphors. A cardinal sin in the eyes of -- HEY! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING!"

A snowplow rumbled past, dangerously close, and House scuffled back from the big scraping blade. "Cripple here!" he bellowed, and struck at the rear bumper of the plow with his cane. "Haven't you ever heard of the Americans With Disabilities Act? I could sue you -- "

Undeterred by the attack on his vehicle, the plow driver chugged on, twisting in his seat a little to show House his gloved middle finger. A grimy blue film of diesel fumes clouded House's face, and he coughed as the tractor continued its noisy, churning path.

House looked down, and his dire threats of governmental retribution died away. "Ah, shit," he whispered.

The white thread had disappeared, buried under the mound of plowed snow.

The trail was lost.

* * *

He stomped back into the hospital, shaking the freezing snowmelt from his shoulders and shooting death-glares at those who dared look his way. He had spent another fifteen minutes outside, searching for some trace of the thread and growing progressively colder, wetter, and angrier.

"Theseus had the right idea," he muttered, and flinched at the corresponding puff of hot breath that gusted against the back of his neck.

 _That's it. This has gone far enough. I want to know what the hell Wilson's drugging me with._

It had to be something new, not on the market yet -- there would have been reports of such vivid hallucinations in the clinical trials. And it had to be something powerful, something for those in _real_ need of cheering up ... like terminal cancer patients.

House froze. Maybe Wilson hadn't gotten over that whole I've-got-brain-cancer thing. Maybe Wilson had decided to help in a different way, and had gotten him into a trial of some new kind of joy-juice, except that instead of inducing happiness, it was producing tactile, auditory, and visual hallucinations.

 _How about delusional paranoia?_ some small part of his brain observed, but House shook it off.

He needed to see Wilson, and now.

* * *

"Wilson! What are you -- " House stopped. "Wilson?" The office was disappointingly empty, and House sighed, annoyed at having been robbed of a perfectly good rant. Then --

"House?" Wilson said, and stepped forward.

House squinted. How had he not seen him, there in the shadows beside the coat rack? His eyes narrowed.

"Have you been outside?" Wilson's hair was clearly damp, and he was scrubbing at it with a small towel.

"Yeah, I had to go back to my car. Forgot something. And then I met McKeskey going out as I was coming back in, and he wanted to talk about -- "

It was Wilson's turn to stop talking, as he stared at House with wide-eyed concern.

"House! You're soaked! You must be freezing!"

House allowed himself to be led to Wilson's office sofa and set down as Wilson flitted around him, grabbing his heavy black lambswool overcoat from the rack and draping it over House's shoulders. While he certainly wasn't _soaked_ \-- Wilson always blew things out of proportion -- he _was_ cold, and he drew the coat more tightly about himself as he cataloged the smells.

Cologne. Shampoo. Deodorant. The unmistakable, faint scent of lanolin, and the sharp ozone of winter air. Wilson crouched before him, buttoning the coat to keep House's body heat from escaping.

"I'm not five, y'know," House grumbled. Wilson's hair, released from its usual state of perfect grooming, was standing up in pointed tufts.

"No, I _don't_ know," Wilson snapped. "Why the hell didn't you put on your jacket if you were going to go roll in the snow?"

"Didn't think I was going to be out there that long. And that plow almost made me into a damn snow angel."

Wilson rocked back on his heels just a bit and looked House in the face. "You know you could've slipped, really hurt yourself."

"Oh, well, good thing I'm _at a hospital,"_ House retorted.

Wilson sighed and dipped his head. He stared at the floor a moment, then ran one hand through his hair in a half-hearted attempt to smooth it down. The scent of fresh-mown hay suddenly perfumed the air; House's nose twitched, but Wilson stood up, seeming not to smell it.

"Okay," he said. "Okay." He made a pushing motion with his hands, and turned away. "Look, you stay here -- and keep that coat on -- until you get warmed up. I've got ... I've got some more meetings to get to." He crossed the few steps to the coatrack and pulled his labcoat from its hanger.

A long white thread came with it.

House stared.

"Damn hospital cleaners," Wilson muttered, twisting around to bat ineffectually at the thread.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," House mumbled.

The smell of clover grew stronger.

 _The gods only give quests to those who are already on them._

 _"Fine,"_ House growled under his breath. "I get the message already." And he did the only thing he could think of.

He coughed, loudly.

Wilson left off trying to capture the errant thread. "House?"

"Wilson." House sniffled, and coughed again, working a note of pitiful hoarseness into his voice. "I don't feel very good." Wilson cocked his head, then snorted. He continued to shoulder into his labcoat.

 _Plan B._

House sneezed, an explosion of sound made possible by the simple expedient of tickling his nose with his thumb. He sneaked a glance at Wilson through his fingers. Wilson was looking at him with concern.

 _Time for the big guns._

"You were right."

Wilson's eyes widened.

 _Gotcha,_ House crowed silently.

"House, do you have a fever?" Already Wilson was hovering again, laying the back of one hand against House's forehead.

"I don't know," House replied humbly. "But you were right -- I could have fallen and not been able to get up." _Careful; don't lay it on too thick._ He coughed a third time, trying for the hacking-up-a-lung effect.

"And you probably took the bike to work this morning, didn't you?" Wilson scolded. "Even though the Weather Channel predicted heavy snow. Come on, I'll run you home."

"And make me dinner."

"And make you ... what?"

House blinked rapidly and snuffled again.

"Dinner," Wilson sighed. "I'll open a can of soup for you."

"Greek," House said.

It was Wilson's turn to blink. "What?"

"That ... thing you make. With lamb and eggplant and cheese. It would be better." Wilson looked unconvinced. "Home cooking. Starve a cold, feed a fever."

"Lamb," Wilson said. "Eggplant. _Pastitsio._ House, that takes hours! I have to brown the lamb, make a tomato sauce, make a bechamel sauce, it needs to bake ... "

House looked pitiful again.

"Fine, okay, I'll cook Greek." Wilson's expression softened. "You warmed up?"

House nodded. He was actually getting hot, buttoned inside the wool. It had been more work than he was used to to bend Wilson to his will, but that eagerness to mend the broken would always be Jimmy's Achilles heel.

"Okay. Give me my coat back and get your stuff. I'll tell Cuddy ... something."

House snaked his hands out from under the coat and began to unbutton it slowly, working from the bottom up.

The thread had led, in the end, to Wilson, and he would be damned if he knew what that meant. What did a hallucination know that he didn't?

Maybe this _wasn't_ the end.

Maybe he was still on the quest.

Maybe ... his quest was what he chose to make it.

Whatever. Wilson was cooking for him tonight, and just for now, that would be enough.

  
~ the end.

 **NOTES:**

Variations on the myth of the Minotaur may be found [here](http://www.explorecrete.com/history/labyrinth-myth.htm).  
A sample recipe for _pastitsio_ may be found [here](http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_21080,00.html?rsrc=search). It really is an absolutely delicious dish. *g*

  



End file.
